As a weakened India without Sachin, Sehwag, Zaheer and Raina takes on West Indies in a four ODI series starting tomorrow, Dhoni has a variety of options to choose his playing XI.
Middle Order: With all the usual batsmen available in the team, the middle order is pretty much fixed with Yuvraj, Dhoni and Yusuf at 4, 5 and 6 respectively.
Openers: Gambhir can be partnered to open with either the regular, but inexperienced opener Vijay or one of the other middle order bats who have some experience at the top – Rohit or Kartik. Even though Rohit had mixed results as an opener in the Twenty20 World Cup, I am inclined to take one more chance with him.
No.3: Three batsmen compete for this spot – Rohit, Kartik and Badrinath. Badri probably deserved this chance a year or two ago, but, I am not very sure if the same can be said now. With Rohit being my choice for opener, I prefer to slot Kartik here. Another option might be for Dhoni to come in at three and move Kartik down to five.
No.7: Normally, I would prefer a specialist bowler here instead of a all-rounder. But, considering the weakness in the top order, two all-rounders compete for this spot – Jadeja and Nayar. My preference is for the spinner Jadeja.
Bowlers Harbhajan picks himself. Ojha loses out to the all-rounder at 7. As for the medium/fast bowlers, my first picks, at least for the first couple of games are Ishant, RP Singh and Nehra.
With that, my playing XI for tomorrow’s game is -
1. Gautam Gambhir
2. Rohit Sharma
3. Dinesh Kartik
4. Yuvraj Singh
5. MS Dhoni
6. Yusuf Pathan
7. R Jadeja
8. Harbhajan Singh
9. Ishant Sharma
10. RP Singh
11. Ashish Nehra
i would have M Vijay in place of DK in the team. DK doesnt impress besides his theaterics.
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